Essential Skills 3 - Chicken

The good news is that when you bone out a chicken and your fabricated pieces look like they accidentally got caught in the garbage disposal for a second or two, you can always make stock, and start over again. Cost wise, chicken is much more forgiving.
Chef Parker has boned out his share of chickens. I think he could do it with his eyes closed. He demonstrated twice and then later on in the kitchen when he witnessed the massacre, he stopped us all and demoed two more times. I have been spoiled by my butcher so my boning skills need work. (I will be cooking lots of chicken this week.) This was a very gratifying process and you end up with some fun pieces to play around with. I especially like the little boneless legs. Chef suggested stuffing and sauteing them. I also liked the "Airline" chicken breast. You create this by leaving the little portion of the wing bone sticking up. Chef just made a little cut and with a twist it magically appeared. I loved the finished look of this.
Trussing was much easier since I had done this many times, though not in this particular way. It was simple and efficient. Nice and tight, with the wings pushed back becoming a rack, and the breast meat lifted from the tautness of the twine.
With our chookies all prepped, we stuffed the airline breast with spinach and ricotta cheese and made a saffron sauce to serve it on. With the whole trussed chicken, we made Poele of Chicken with Pearl Onions and Mushrooms.
"Poeler" is to roast in a covered pot with butter and aromatic vegetables. The closest English translation is pot-roasting. In fact, a poelon is a type of french earthenware casserole dish.
Yes, I've moved from my text book to readidng my Dictionary of Culinary Arts.

The pot roast of chicken was delicious. We made up a sauce with the juices and vegetables after sauteing the blanched pearl onions and mushrooms in a bit of the fat.



Lastly, we started the prep for Duck Breast with Red Chard and Apricot Mustard. This entailed scoring the fat side of our duck breast and slow cooking it in duck fat on just this one side until it was nice and brown. Did you know that eating chicken and duck fat is good for your skin? I don't know if this is true but it is what I have decided to tell myself from now on.

We will finish it off tomorrow.

I have six mandatory career planning classes on Tuesdays for awhile until I figure out where I want to do my externship at and what I want to do when I graduate.

I have no idea. One thing I do know however, is that I need to practice boning out a whole chicken.

Goodnight.